IndiaStack UPSC: Relevance
- GS 3: Achievements of Indians in science & technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.
Digital India Week: Context
- Recently, an event titled ‘India Stack Knowledge Exchange (ISKE)’ programme was organised as a part of the Digital India Week by the Ministry of Electronics & IT.
India Stack Knowledge Exchange: Key points
- The programme came to its culmination with the three brainstorming thematic sessions on ‘Urban Stack’, ‘Technology Stack for e-Commerce’ and ‘Space Technology Stack’.
- ISKE 2022 was also visualised to present to the global community, India Stack solutions and goods, and welcomed any nation to adopt, and customise them for their own use.
Urban Stack
- Smart Cities Mission, an ambitious project built around the 4 Quadrant approaches of Information, Communication, Prediction and Management, also includes the 3Ps of deployment – People, Policies & Processes and Platforms.
- Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP) is about effective movement of goods, reducing logistics cost and time, providing real-time information and improving international competitiveness.
- Digital Infrastructure for Governance, Impact and Transformation (DIGIT) enabled by India Stack has been implemented in over 1000 cities resulting in impact on 180 Million citizens.
- India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX) has been deployed in 18 cities, and highlighted success stories through examples of bus occupancy with ETA (Surat), Safe routes and places (Pune), Multimodal transport (Surat), Efficient solid waste pick (Varanasi), Adaptive traffic lights (Agartala) and flood warning (Chennai).
Technology Stack for e-Commerce
- The panel brainstormed on the technological challenges associated with the GeM platform built for procurement within the government sector, managing around 2.5 lakh crore worth of gross merchandise value.
- The panel also discussed the Open Network for Digital Commerce platform, which is a coveted initiative for eliminating monopoly from the platforms by bringing in a completely open-source domain which provides gateway to buyers and sellers between the platforms.
- It was also apprised that the eWay Bill has resulted into about 20–30% efficiency in logistics.
Space Technology Stack
- The thematic session gave insight into space technologies developed indigenously.
- It showcased Space Technology applications, namely, Satellite Communications, Navigation, Earth Observation, and Geospatial Data Dissemination.
- The eminent speakers shared how indigenously developed regional navigation system of India (NavIC), visualization system of India (VEDAS) and Indian storehouse for space-based weather & ocean data (MOSDAC) are crystallizing India’s position as a global leader in space technology.
- SATCOM’s application for e-Governance namely, Bhuvan, Bhoonidhi&Yuktdhara’s solutions was also shared.
What is India Stack?
- IndiaStack is a set of APIs that allows governments, businesses, startups and developers to utilise a unique digital Infrastructure to solve India’s hard problems towards presence-less, paperless, and cashless service delivery.
List of APIs
The following APIs are considered to be a core part of the India Stack.
- Aadhaar Authentication
- Aadhaar e-KYC
- eSign
- Digital Locker
- Unified Payment Interface (UPI)
- Digital User Consent – still work in progress.
The following APIs are also considered to be societal platforms built on similar principles like India Stack:
- GSTN – The Goods and Services Tax Network
- BBPS – The Bharat Bill Payment System
- ETC – Electronic Toll Collection (known under the brand FASTag)
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